A great beginning

Posted by David Hardy · 14 October 2008 03:12 PM

"North Philly, May 4, 2001. Officer Sean Devlin, Narcotics Strike Force, was working the morning shift. Undercover surveillance. The neighborhood? Tough as a three dollar steak. Devlin knew. Five years on the beat, nine months with the Strike Force. He’d made fifteen, twenty drug busts in the neighborhood.

Devlin spotted him: a lone man on the corner. Another approached. Quick exchange of words. Cash handed over; small objects handed back. Each man then quickly on his own way. Devlin knew the guy wasn’t buying bus tokens. He radioed a description and Officer Stein picked up the buyer. Sure enough: three bags of crack in the guy’s pocket. Head downtown and book him. Just another day at the office."

Then it continues:

"That was not good enough for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which held in a divided decision that the police lacked probable cause to arrest the defendant."

Based not only on common sense but also his experi­ence as a narcotics officer and his previous work in the neighborhood, Officer Devlin concluded that what happened on that street corner was probably a drug transaction. That is by far the most reasonable conclusion, even though our cases only require it to be a reasonable conclusion. I would grant certiorari and reverse the judgment of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

Yes, we read it. Haven’t you read all those stories about people arrested for legal open carry? And what about the stories of innocent people in jail? Yeah, police testimony is foolproof, eh? What we want is for police to base their actions on actual evidence, not their conclusions...no matter how "reasonable" (whatever that means) they seem.

Well, I live in New York City, where you have to submit yourself to being searched if you want to ride the public mass transit system, and where the courts have upheld the cops power to stop and search anyone they please. If you think it’s wrong to require that cops have some evidence before violating your rights then you’re the one who’s out of touch.

No, it’s not. It’s testimony, and history shows that it’s just as subject to abuse as testimony from anyone else. There’s nothing special about the testimony of a cop.

Personally, I would say that a cop’s testimony is the most suspect of all, because it’s a serious problem for the officer if his own testimony doesn’t clearly support his actions. Didn’t you see Brett Darrow’s video of a cop threatening to make up charges? Without Darrow’s video that cop could have said anything and the court would likely have accepted it.

An officer’s testimony should always be considered tainted by the officer’s self interest.